We knew Verizon was bringing back the Palm brand this year, but nobody guessed the phone itself would be so unusual. Latest in TCL's efforts to resurrect older smartphone brands and return them to store shelves, the Palm revival follows a surprisingly good BlackBerry reboot.
When was the last time you held a Palm in your hand? And, yes, we’re talking about the device, not another person’s (or your own) palm. If you were lucky, that would have been back in 2011 with the Palm Pre 2 pictured above. If you weren’t lucky then, you could be lucky now. According to sources, the Palm is coming back this year as promised, like a blast from the past, it will be carried once again by Verizon, maybe even exclusively.
A new Palm smartphone has been tipped to be coming in the year 2018, made by the folks at TCL. The Palm brand has been in limbo for the past half-decade, moving in and out of HP-connected devices then on into relative obscurity. The Palm operating system was acquired by LG and continues to be used (in some form or another) in LG smart TVs to this day - as such, it won't be coming with the Palm phone set for next year.
Palm was a big name in the PDA and smartphone market for a long time before it was surpassed by smartphone makers like Samsung and Apple and ultimately went out of business. We mentioned late last month that word was circulating that the Palm brand might be making a comeback and now at CES 2015 and that comeback has been confirmed. TCL Communications Technology Holdings Limited has confirmed that it will be bringing Palm back to market.
Palm was the company behind some of the original PDAs that some fans of the iPhone and Android devices today cut their teeth on. Palm was unable to compete when the smartphone boom started in earnest and eventually went out of business with the name and patents belonging to several companies before winding up with HP. HP only wanted the webOS operating system from Palm and left the company name defunct before webOS failed too and disappeared.
When you’ve got an iPhone, your friends know it. Those around you know you're holding an iPhone with just a glance. Over the past few years, several brands have also begun settling their brand well enough that you’re able to identify their smartphone at a glance. What sets your smartphone apart from the rest?
The legacy of Palm is almost all but gone but bits and pieces still live here and there. Now the team behind WebOS has just released Mochi, a software design language meant for the mobile platform that unfortunately didn't see the light of day. Until now.
This afternoon Qualcomm has announced that they will acquire all of HP's remaining Palm-related patents. They will also be acquiring from Hewlett-Packard a number of other patents in the mobile sector, including those under the titles' iPAQ and Bitphone. This purchase will apparently also include both patents and patent applications.
If you say the name HP, most of us automatically think about computers. HP is one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world. The problem for HP is that the computer market is shrinking rapidly with declining sales in the face of the booming popularity of smartphones and tablets.
This week former CEO of Palm Jon Rubinstein spoke up on Palm and the software and user interface elements the company created that are now being adopted industry-wide. For those that knew the mobile operating system webOS as created by the former company called Palm, the release of iOS 7 - as well as many other updates to OS' both mobile and desktop - the similarities to certain unique elements cannot be dismissed.
It's not every day you hear of a smartphone technology getting its own massive 22,000 word, 55-page write up. But that's just what's been announced this week as the article known as "Palm: I'm Ready to Wallow Now" is offered up on the back of the decades-long history of the operating system. Writer Thom Holwerda speaks of the death of the mobile operating system and the long - surprisingly long - life it had before its demise.
Michael Pryce-Jones, senior governance policy analyst for the CtW Investment Group, stated that he will be campaigning against HP directors G. Kennedy Thompson and John Hammergren at HP’s annual shareholder meeting on March 20th. Pryce-Jones states that both Thompson and Hammergren should be held responsible for “HP’s missteps” including the fall out from its acquisition of the UK software company, Autonomy. Pryce-Jones does not want to campaign against HP’s board chairman, Raymond Lane, because he feels that unseating Lane would result in destabilization in HP’s future.